Backend Team Lead – Java/Spring Boot (Neon Team)

About the role

We are looking for a Backend Team Lead to join the Neon project, a fast‑growing fintech startup. You will combine hands‑on coding with people‑first leadership to grow a high‑performing backend engineering team.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of backend engineers (1:1s, performance feedback, career paths).
• Foster trust and psychological safety, acting as the go‑to person for engineering challenges.
• Drive planning, prioritisation and delivery in an agile Kanban environment, balancing technical debt and feature velocity.
• Represent the team in cross‑functional discussions with product, QA and platform teams.
• Stay hands‑on with Java 21, Spring Boot 3, REST APIs and Kubernetes to support the team.
• Conduct code reviews and knowledge‑sharing sessions to raise the team’s technical bar.
• Shape technical direction collaboratively with the team.

Required profile

• Prior experience as a Team Lead or Engineering Manager (mandatory).
• Proven ability to mentor, develop and grow engineers.
• Strong communication skills and comfort handling interpersonal challenges.
• Solid experience building production‑grade Java applications.
• Fluent in spoken and written English; German or other languages are a plus.
• Based in Belgrade or willing to work on‑site at least two days per week (hybrid).

Required skills

• Java 21
• Spring Boot 3
• JPA / Hibernate
• REST APIs
• Kubernetes
• Microservices architecture
• Angular
• MySQL & PostgreSQL
• Google Cloud Platform
• CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices

What we offer

• Private health insurance
• Opportunity to work on a high‑impact fintech product with 250k+ users
• Collaborative, respectful and socially engaged tech culture